Every IB question opens with an instruction, and that instruction is not decoration. It tells you how long the answer should be, what kind of reasoning it needs, and what the examiner is allowed to give you credit for. Students lose marks on content they knew perfectly well because they answered a different question from the one asked.

There are twenty-five official command terms. You do not need to memorise all of them, but you do need to know which of three jobs each one is asking for.

The three jobs

State, list
Give the answer. No working, no justification, no sentences.
Describe
Say what happens or what something is like. No causes.
Outline
A short account of the main points. Less than describe.
Explain
Give reasons or mechanisms. The word because should appear.
Compare and contrast
Similarities and differences, both, in the same answer.
Analyse
Break it into parts and show how they relate.
Discuss
A balanced review of more than one side, ending somewhere.
Evaluate
Weigh strengths against limitations and reach a judgement.
To what extent
Evaluate, and say how much. A one sided answer loses marks.
Justify
Give valid reasons for the choice or conclusion you made.
Suggest
Propose something plausible. You are not expected to be certain.
Deduce
Reach a conclusion from the information given, not from memory.

Some terms ask you to recall: define, state, identify, outline. These want short answers with no justification. Writing a paragraph for a one-mark state question does not earn more credit, it just costs you time you needed later in the paper.

Some ask you to apply: calculate, determine, explain, show that. These want working and reasoning, and the marks are distributed across the steps rather than sitting on the final answer.

Some ask you to judge: evaluate, discuss, to what extent, compare. These carry the most marks and need structure - more than one side, evidence, and a conclusion that commits to a position.

Describe and explain are not synonyms

This is the single most commonly lost mark in the diploma. Describe asks what happens. Explain asks why it happens. An answer that describes a process in beautiful detail scores nothing on an explain question, because it never gives a reason.

The fix is mechanical. If the question says explain, make sure every point has a because in it, stated or implied. Each link in the causal chain tends to be worth a mark.

Evaluate means decide

Listing strengths and limitations is not evaluation, it is preparation for evaluation. The judgement is the mark. An answer that weighs both sides carefully and then stops has done the hard part and skipped the part being assessed.

The same applies to discuss and to what extent. Both need a conclusion that follows from what came before, and to what extent additionally needs you to say how far - not just that it is partly true.

Show that and hence are instructions, not phrasing

In a show that question the answer is given to you, so the only thing that can earn marks is the working between the start and that result. Jumping to it, or working backwards from it, scores nothing.

Hence means use the previous part. A fresh method that reaches the right answer may score zero, because the question was testing whether you could see the connection.

In short

  • Read the first word before you read the rest of the question.
  • State and outline want short answers. Padding costs time, not marks.
  • On explain, put a because in every point.
  • On evaluate and discuss, commit to a conclusion. The judgement is the mark.